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Forbes
28-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How To Find The Right Marketing Agency For Your Goals
Raja Walia is the Founder and CEO of GNW Consulting. When companies start looking for a marketing agency, it's normal to be impressed by well-known client logos, large teams and polished websites. But while such markers can signal credibility, they don't always ensure the right fit. With budgets under pressure and growing expectations for measurable results, it's important to look beyond surface-level indicators and evaluate what truly matters. The agency that will help your business grow might not be the biggest or the flashiest. Here's how to evaluate whether a marketing agency truly aligns with your goals. Go beyond the playbook. Some agencies are built for scale. Their teams rely on frameworks, templates and repeatable tactics that allow them to move quickly. That kind of efficiency has its place, especially for companies looking to execute known strategies across large volumes of content or channels. However, if your business has unique needs, is entering a new market or requires nuanced positioning, you may need a more customized approach. Before you commit to an agency, ask how they actually build their strategies. Do they take time to get to know your business, including your goals, your customers and your competition? What kind of research or discovery work do they do before jumping into execution? It's also fair to ask for examples. How have they adapted their approach for clients with different needs or challenges? Evaluate team structure and communication. Agencies aren't all built the same. Some come with large teams and numerous specialists, each focused on a narrow aspect of the work. Others take a leaner approach, with smaller teams where people wear more hats and stay closely involved from start to finish. Neither structure is automatically better. What matters is how well their setup aligns with your needs and whether the team working on your account is equipped to move quickly, communicate effectively and deliver tangible value. Rather than assume that more people mean better results, ask how the agency organizes its team around your account. Who will be your day-to-day contact? How is information shared internally? What is the approval process like? Look for signs of a thoughtful and responsive structure, not one that introduces delays or communication breakdowns. Expertise also matters. Ask how the agency trains its team. Do strategists act as true consultants who understand your business, or are they more focused on task execution? Do they bring fresh thinking to the table or primarily take direction? Clarity around team roles and processes can help ensure the agency is set up to deliver value from the start. Dig into cost drivers. Agencies price their work in a few different ways. Some charge hourly; others use flat fees, retainers or performance-based setups. No matter the model, it's important to understand exactly what you're paying for. Ask them to walk you through it. What's included in the fee (e.g., strategy development, meetings, reporting and revisions), and what might come at an additional cost? The more clarity you have upfront, the fewer surprises you'll encounter down the line. You may also want to know how the agency allocates time and seniority across the team supporting your account. It's a good idea to ask how the agency spends its time and resources. Are you paying for deep thinking and strong execution, or are you also covering perks and overhead that don't directly benefit your business? A cool office or great culture might signal a healthy company, but what matters most is how much of your budget goes toward actual results. You'll also want to understand how a potential partner defines success. Do they track real business outcomes or just focus on surface-level stats? The right agency will be clear about what they're aiming for, and it should match what you care about. A strong partnership starts with finding the right fit. A slick portfolio can be a great starting point, but it's not the whole story. The right agency will want to understand what matters to you—not just your KPIs, but also your pace, pain points and the bigger picture. They'll ask questions that go beyond the brief and take the time to understand how your team works. You're not just hiring a vendor. You're choosing a partner. And often the agencies that get the best results are the ones that meet you where you are, take a hands-on approach and grow with you. When you go beyond surface-level indicators and ask the right questions about strategy, team structure and cost, you can find a marketing partner that supports meaningful, measurable growth. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Revenue Trap: How Short-Term Thinking Kills Long-Term Growth
Raja Walia is the Founder and CEO of GNW Consulting. Marketing is supposed to contribute to its organization's overall revenue—a fact that few would dispute. But in recent years, the connection between marketing efforts and revenue has become more and more linear, with many leaders expecting direct results. In theory, this might be logical. Marketing's role isn't just about driving immediate revenue. Companies need to reconsider how they measure its impact. While short-term wins are important, they don't always lead to sustained, long-term growth. On the flip side, efforts like building and strategic positioning are critical components of marketing but are more challenging to measure directly. However, this doesn't diminish their value. How can teams hold marketing accountable and measure its effectiveness without overlooking these intangible aspects? While short-term metrics are measurable, the long-term effects of marketing don't always fit neatly into a profit-and-loss equation. The reality is that focusing solely on revenue overlooks the strategic value of marketing, which is key to driving sustained growth. Here's why. When business leaders put the spotlight on short-term returns on investment (ROI), they inadvertently put pressure on marketing to prioritize quick hits. This might look like turning up the dial on paid advertising, webinars or promotional campaigns. While these might be plenty of useful tactics, the problem comes with the opportunity cost of investing primarily in them. If the marketing team allocates the majority of its budget to these short-term initiatives, they're losing out on the chance to put those funds toward long-term initiatives like brand building. As fewer resources are allocated to establishing a strong, consistent brand identity, it becomes harder for the organization to stand out in competitive markets. Customer trust and loyalty are also weakened. Ultimately, this imbalance can hinder sustained growth and long-term success. Without a strong brand, businesses rely heavily on tools and platforms for quick fixes. This has become the norm among B2B organizations. Need to drive traffic to specific landing pages? Plug in Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads for a temporary boost of sign-ups or sales. While this seems rewarding, it creates a dependency where success is now tied to continuous spend. Customers acquired have little brand loyalty and will churn at the smallest issue. While such moves can deliver immediate results, they fail to address the underlying issues of brand identity and customer loyalty. Over-relying on such solutions without a strategic brand foundation may provide short-term relief but won't help your company differentiate itself or build a lasting connection with customers in the long run. Focusing solely on revenue leads businesses to prioritize quick wins over building lasting customer relationships, creating a revolving door of customers. Customers have no reason to stay beyond the initial transaction without a strong brand and meaningful connection. This short-term mindset traps companies in a costly cycle of constant acquisition, driving up costs as they replace lost customers instead of nurturing loyalty. Without consistent messaging and real engagement, customer retention is weakened and every sale is harder to win. Chasing immediate ROI at the expense of customer relationships limits long-term profitability. When customers feel no connection to a brand, they leave, and businesses lose repeat purchases, referrals and advocacy—key drivers of sustainable revenue. Marketing should be about building a brand people choose again and again, not just focusing on short-term gains. It might seem to make business sense to focus on marketing's impact on revenue or even go so far as to relabel it as 'revenue marketing,' as some companies do. But marketing has always been about a lot more than simple transactions. The department is there to shore up your brand, foster trust, make promises that your products or services will deliver on, and keep your customers happy throughout a lifetime of engaging with you. To force your marketers into a myopic view of revenue is to reduce their impact and decrease their long-term contributions to your company's success and, ironically, revenue. Your marketing team should be given the resources and freedom to invest in brand building while simultaneously keeping high-yield efforts in play. By striking the right balance between short-term results and long-term brand development, marketing can better drive sustainable growth that cultivates lasting customer loyalty and trust. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
